Many public and private groups, such as security and safety personnel (e.g., police, firefighters and ambulance drivers) rely on standard operating procedures (SOPs) to conduct their daily operations as well as to manage emergencies. These SOPs are well defined and well understood action steps for how agencies or groups of people from different communication networks are brought together. However, many incidents unfold in a dynamic manner and require deviations from the regular SOPs. For example, a Mayor's office may have to be alerted during the course of managing a hazardous material cleanup operation, or a hazmat specialist may have to be dynamically brought in to provide her knowledge and expertise.
The SOPs may involve facilitating communication between various communication networks of differing technologies and types (e.g., land mobile radios communicating through push-to-talk technologies). However, communications among different endpoints of different networks such as endpoints of different police, fire or other security networks may be difficult. Collaboration between the different agencies and networks tends to be ad hoc and inefficient. When achieved, it often involves laborious manual intervention. Organizations working towards interoperability solutions include Raytheon JPS Communications, IP Blue, Twisted Pair, M/A-COM and Cisco Systems.